In our own garden, there haven't been many butterflies this summer. Although there are many flowering plants, these have been attracting mainly bees and flies. The times that I have seen butterflies, they were just passing through the garden.
To see more butterflies, we took a trip late one afternoon this week to a public garden that is designed to attract butterflies -- especially monarchs. How does a garden attract monarchs? With milkweed, lots and lots of milkweed.
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| A monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) drinking nectar from a milkweed flower. |
Adult monarch butterflies come to milkweed flowers to drink nectar. The female butterflies
will also lay their eggs on milkweed plants. I looked under many
leaves, but I didn't find any eggs. What I did find was a multitude of monarch caterpillars and a couple of chrysalises.
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| A monarch caterpillar eating a milkweed leaf. |
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| A monarch chrysalis. |
Why are monarchs so attracted to milkweed? Milkweeds contain a toxic chemical that the caterpillars ingest. It does not harm the caterpillar, but it will poison almost any predator that ignores the monarch's bright warning coloration.
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